I am not particularly excited. Most of this sounds good, but at the same time Bioware always makes it's products sound good, and we're in a position where they have outright lied to customers before, and even released "behind the scenes" apps for games like "Mass Effect 3" that make it clear they knew exactly what they were doing. Given the lack of doing a new, proper, Mass Effect 3 ending and similar things I can't really say I trust Bioware. I'll be waiting until after this game comes out to see what people are saying (especially about the endings) before I put down any money on it.
To be honest two things in their statement make me wary. They mention not doing the DLC characters due to perceptions of people feeling cheated for being sold things already on the disc. Bioware doesn't actually say "we were wrong, this was a scummy thing to do, and we're not going to do it anymore" they actually say that the people were complaining so they are bowing to pressure even if the people making the complaints were wrong. That shows a kind of warped attitude that makes me war. The second thing that gets me is that they are again making this an "action RPG" as opposed to a true RPG, the first "Dragon Age" was so well received because it was basically a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate (ie what Baldur's Gate would have been like with then-current technology), people still play the old "Infinity Engine"
games and there are efforts to update and re-launch them going on. A big part of the problem with "Dragon Age 2" was not only that it re-used environments and such, but was turned into something similar to a brawler. One of the things people were mocking was the fact that the loading screens would tell you to use standard "RPG party tactics" like using warriors in front of mages and such, but in the actual game this was impossible because the bad guys would spawn in waves, appearing right in the middle of the party, and some had abilities that let them basically run around the rather open (in many cases) combat areas with complete imputiny. You couldn't say stand a fighter in a place where the bad guys absolutely had to get past him before they could get to the spell casting mage. By trying to keep this as an 'action RPG' series as opposed to a more tactical one, it still shows they really don't know the audience that made the first game successful and are trying to go after what they see as a more profitable sector with the series. Perhaps it will work and be a very good game, but when I look at the disaster they already created, and what had me invested in the series to begin with, it doesn't seem like they are exactly getting things back on track with what people wanted after "Origins".
What's more I have to wonder what exactly they are talking about when they mention this game shipping on 14 discs as an excuse for not having more voice options. To be painfully blunt, games haven't really been shipping on discs for ages, especially for the PC. The disc just connects you to something like "STEAM" where you download it online. What's more consoles themselves increasingly require you to be online, and seem to be moving towards phasing out physical media, with digital distribution available. I'd expect with something like this that Bioware would just focus on making the product "digital only" and do what they need to in order to make the game as high quality as possible. To be honest though I think the bottom line is that voice actors are expensive and hiring some guys to read a couple dozen hours of gameplay dialogue in a recording studio is more than they want to spend. I might receive things a bit better if Bioware kind of just said "hey, we're cheap, it's too expensive" rather than going on about needing 14 bloody discs which just sounds insane.
If it seems like I'm picking on Bioware, it's because I am. They deserve to be picked on, it's their job to win me back, not my job to fawn over them. They created a situation where now I'm going to get on their case and view everything they say in the worst possible light because hey... that's the kind of reputation they've earned.
To be honest two things in their statement make me wary. They mention not doing the DLC characters due to perceptions of people feeling cheated for being sold things already on the disc. Bioware doesn't actually say "we were wrong, this was a scummy thing to do, and we're not going to do it anymore" they actually say that the people were complaining so they are bowing to pressure even if the people making the complaints were wrong. That shows a kind of warped attitude that makes me war. The second thing that gets me is that they are again making this an "action RPG" as opposed to a true RPG, the first "Dragon Age" was so well received because it was basically a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate (ie what Baldur's Gate would have been like with then-current technology), people still play the old "Infinity Engine"
games and there are efforts to update and re-launch them going on. A big part of the problem with "Dragon Age 2" was not only that it re-used environments and such, but was turned into something similar to a brawler. One of the things people were mocking was the fact that the loading screens would tell you to use standard "RPG party tactics" like using warriors in front of mages and such, but in the actual game this was impossible because the bad guys would spawn in waves, appearing right in the middle of the party, and some had abilities that let them basically run around the rather open (in many cases) combat areas with complete imputiny. You couldn't say stand a fighter in a place where the bad guys absolutely had to get past him before they could get to the spell casting mage. By trying to keep this as an 'action RPG' series as opposed to a more tactical one, it still shows they really don't know the audience that made the first game successful and are trying to go after what they see as a more profitable sector with the series. Perhaps it will work and be a very good game, but when I look at the disaster they already created, and what had me invested in the series to begin with, it doesn't seem like they are exactly getting things back on track with what people wanted after "Origins".
What's more I have to wonder what exactly they are talking about when they mention this game shipping on 14 discs as an excuse for not having more voice options. To be painfully blunt, games haven't really been shipping on discs for ages, especially for the PC. The disc just connects you to something like "STEAM" where you download it online. What's more consoles themselves increasingly require you to be online, and seem to be moving towards phasing out physical media, with digital distribution available. I'd expect with something like this that Bioware would just focus on making the product "digital only" and do what they need to in order to make the game as high quality as possible. To be honest though I think the bottom line is that voice actors are expensive and hiring some guys to read a couple dozen hours of gameplay dialogue in a recording studio is more than they want to spend. I might receive things a bit better if Bioware kind of just said "hey, we're cheap, it's too expensive" rather than going on about needing 14 bloody discs which just sounds insane.
If it seems like I'm picking on Bioware, it's because I am. They deserve to be picked on, it's their job to win me back, not my job to fawn over them. They created a situation where now I'm going to get on their case and view everything they say in the worst possible light because hey... that's the kind of reputation they've earned.
